IT has been my misfortune to be a guest on the Off The Ball Sunday Supplement a couple of times.

I say misfortune but, to be honest, after the first experience there can be no complaints. Once bitten, it would only be a shameful lack of shyness that could prevent you from accepting the next invitation.

Even the first time around, I knew what I was there for. Stuart Cosgrove, one of the most intelligent broadcasters in the country and Tam Cowan, the street-wisecracker, are very much a double act who are quite pleasant to you before, during and after their shows, but any guest is there to be their straight man/fall guy depending on the material.

They have upset a fair few down the years and, given the nature of Tam's humour, it was probably only a matter of time before he was deemed to have over-stepped the mark. As someone who has campaigned for equal rights in sport for many years, I can't say that I would particularly enjoy an article sending up women's sport, but I would like to think that I would read it in the context of who the author is and what he does.

A very bright bloke in his own right, the character Tam represents on air and in print is that of the voice of the old-fashioned fitba' fan who has little time for what might be termed the poncier aspects of sport. It was to his credit both that he has now apologised and, in its own way, that he stuck to his guns when saying he still would not open his curtains if a women's football match was taking place in his garden.

He is as entitled to that view as I am to observe that I would take the same approach if his beloved Motherwell FC pitched up in my backyard, albeit I might invite the dog to chase them off. Matters of preferred personal viewing apart, though, the truly significant point in Tam's column was the fact that the attendance at the match in question was so small, which raises the question as to whether the real significance is the extent to which his views tapped into the zeitgeist.

Those in favour of better treatment for women in sport ought to be focusing their attention on the attitudes that are merely reflected -not led - by a man whose job it is to tell jokes for a living and why there appears to be so little interest.

Part of the problem is the lack of profile for women in sport and for that the media must take its share of the blame. There are great stories to be told and personalities to be revealed as I have been reminded in recent weeks in interviewing Kirsty Gilmour, Scotland's Commonwealth Games badminton hopeful; the Olympic curler Eve Muirhead; the Olympic skiing hopeful Pamela Thorburn; the world champion rower Polly Swann; and Solheim Cup golfer Beatriz Recari.

The first four of those are all Scottish and, in different ways, were born into a form of sporting 'privilege'. In the cases of Gilmour and Muirhead, it was their good fortune to be the latest in what might be described as sporting dynasties, previous generations of their families having been prominent in the sports in which they have emerged. In those of Thorburn and Swann, it was more down to background: the former grew up in a family that took regular skiing holidays; the latter attended a private school where she was given the chance to try rowing and discovered a talent for it.

There is considerable crossover here with my belief that there has been what I describe as a "middle-classification" of Scottish sport other than football, with far too few being given real opportunities to discover what they are good at.

In the case of women, though, there are additional cultural issues to consider and even some of those who believe they are promoting women's sport need to take a look at themselves.

Take, for example, last weekend's coverage of the women's world cycling championship road race and the observation of a female pundit that she knew one of the competitors was serious when she met her father and he told her that his daughter had turned down the chance to go to shopping.

Can you imagine the same observation being made about Bradley Wiggins or Chris Froome, setting aside the fact that some observers reckoned the pair of them might as well have headed for the malls of Tuscany for all that they contributed to the men's road race on Sunday? Of course, that throwaway remark was, as Tam Cowan might also claim of his comments, merely an attempt at humour that was arguably inappropriate.

A much bigger problem is women "who know their place". Those to whom I refer include, but are not only, the women on influential bodies who reckon they should be grateful for the rare opportunities they are given to visit single-sex golf clubs, rather than campaigning against their existence, or at least their selection as hosts for major events.

If we want to be serious about addressing the discriminatory attitudes that contribute to turning girls off sport, let's talk about these attitudes rather than merely those of a bloke who generally does a pretty decent job of entertaining the masses but just went a wee bit too far the other day.